Study with Maria: Poetry for Kids
During the 1980s and early 1990s, I had opportunities to teach poetry to children in Pennsylvania and New York City. Working in partnership with the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and Poets-in-Public Service based in Manhattan, I offered workshops to children ranging from grades K-12.
Teaching children to write poetry differs from accomplishing the same with an adult audience, at least in mainstream education. It is accomplished mostly through game-like techniques. As a teacher, I learned much about guiding students along the path of poetry, in general, through teaching the youngest children how to write poems. Older audiences become suspect when teachers implement game-like structures in the learning process. Of course, this means that their inner children (plural of “inner child”) have been shackled.
During these lessons, I resurrect many techniques that I’ve used, particularly when I worked in New York with Poets-in-Public Service. Students also get a preview into the lessons I will be using in a book I’m writing about teaching poetry to children.
These lessons are also great for any adult who wants to get in touch with his or her inner child again.
Doing this allows adults to experience the primal creativity that kids experience before left-brained education squeezes it out of them.
It is a journey that I take often, to keep my inner child nourished and alive.
Parents, grandparents and care-givers can also take this course so that they learn how to teach their children how to become budding poets.
A series of lessons may be accomplished in two months; however, I will provide ample lessons for one full year of learning.
A minimum commitment to a tutorial sequence is a month with four lessons @ $50 dollars each, or an overall $200 payment due in advance of beginning lessons.
All of my writing courses are accomplished by email correspondence.
Additionally, a child who completes a year of lessons will have enough poems written to fill a complete book! Imagine how such an accomplishment will look on high school and college transcripts!
The workshops can easily turn into a family activity, with parents reading and monitoring lessons and providing their own feedback, too.
You may send your child to ballet or martial art lessons, and that’s wonderful—but imagine all the direct and indirect benefits this course can bring: enhanced creativity, vocabulary growth, knowledge of the history of poetry in English, grammar skills, and above all, your child’s discovery of voice and individuality.
Contact me at drmariawu@msn.com for more information.
Copyright 2016 by Maria Jacketti